Sabin Wine Journeys

February 18, 2023.   It was Kim’s idea to depart from our plans to visit Lake Anna Winery in Spotsylvania, and what a bit of good luck it was.   Lake Anna Winery is located, as the name implies, just three miles from the resort lake.   The winery is in a 1940’s converted and structurally reinforced dairy building situated among the vines that slope gently downward to the woods.   The tasting room is medium sized single barn-like room with lots of activity and noise.   At one end there is a gas fireplace and a comfy sofa.   At the other end is a two-station tasting bar.   Outside there are picnic tables looking over the vines.   There’s not much food selection here, so plan to bring your own.   Families are welcome and were having a good time strolling between the rows of dormant vines.      Bill and Ann Heidig first planted grapes on their farm in 1983 and first released wine in 1990, making it one of the older Virginia wineries.   The winery is under a stock corporation formed in

  Windridge Vineyards.   November 7, 2021.   The Manifesto for this Blog states that our travels are “mostly” in Virginia.   However, after reading an article in a recent Washington Post about wineries close to Washington, DC, Kim and I ventured across the river to Darnestown, Maryland, to visit Windridge Vineyards on a crisp Sunday morning. First, a note about Maryland wineries.   Although Maryland and Virginia share much in their historical development, they appear to have diverged in the 1980’s.   Virginia   took a path resulting in a more robust wine industry now than Maryland.   I believe that Maryland wine traces its start back to the 1640’s and followed a similar path as Virginia. In 1979, Maryland had seven operating wineries while Virginia, a state around four times larger, famously had only six wineries.   But in 1979-80, Virginia enacted its farm winery legislation allowing wine sales at the source (see, Bureaucracy page).   It was not until twenty years later that M